Jim Cramer’s Mad Money: Overview

This week, The Simple Dollar takes a look at the new investing book from Jim Cramer, Mad Money. This book is surprisingly different from its predecessor, Real Money, in a number of ways. I quite enjoyed the first one; will I enjoy this one, too? Let’s find out!

When I picked up Cramer’s first investment book, Real Money, I fully expected it to be obnoxious and loud, like the book’s namesake. Instead, I was rewarded with a very interesting read – one that packed a lot of information for beginning individual investors into one thin volume. It was a fast and enjoyable read, too, so I was quite happy to give the book a pretty sizeable thumbs up.

Recently, though, Cramer produced a follow-up, entitled Mad Money. From the title and the cover alone, you can tell one big thing that’s changed: Cramer now has a very popular stock picking show on CNBC, and this book is pretty clearly co-branded with the show. What will that do to the content within? Will this be a valuable and interesting stock-picking book, or has Cramer sold out?

A quick glance through the chapter titles gives a very cloudy view at best. Some chapters look really promising (“Selling Stocks The Right Way,” “Ten Lessons From My Bad Calls,” and “Ten Lessons From Success: Some Buy And Sell Rules”); others look like television show brand extensions (“How And Why You Should Watch My CEO Interviews,” for one). I was rather queasy about picking this one up because of this air of television promotional material that surrounds the book, but I was still holding back a glimmer of optimism because I enjoyed his earlier investing book so much.

So, what did I think? Over the next three days, I’m going to look deeply at the contents of this book and try to decide if it’s a useful read for the beginning individual stock picker (like his first book was), or if it is a mere shill for his television show (as the cover and title seem to hint). On Friday, I’ll give a final buy or don’t buy recommendation.

I’d like to see you review “The Wall Street Self-defense Manual: A Consumer’s Guide to Intelligent Investing” as a different perspective on Cramer’s advice. Basically, Blodget argues that passively-managed index funds are always the right answer, and provides lots of solid numbers to back his advice up.

Advertising Disclosure:
TheSimpleDollar.com has an advertising relationship with some of the offers included on this page. However, the rankings and listings of our reviews, tools and all other content are based on objective analysis. For more information and a complete list of our advertising partners, please check out our full Advertising Disclosure. TheSimpleDollar.com strives to keep its information accurate and up to date. The information in our reviews could be different from what you find when visiting a financial institution, service provider or a specific product's website. All products are presented without warranty.